Citrus Greening-HLB Genome Resources Group: A bioinformatics resource for diverse projects related to the biology and diagnosis of citrus greening/HLB

The CG-HLB Genome Resources Group serves as a bioinformatics resource for diverse projects related to the biology and diagnosis of citrus greening/HLB. Current projects include the identification of bacterial endosymbionts in the Diaphorina citri (Asian citrus psyllid) metagenome. Mapping sequence reads to reference genomes shows evidence for Wolbachia and an enterobacterial endosymbiont related to Salmonella in the metagenome. A draft genome sequence has been produced for the Wolbachia endosymbiont of D. citri (wDi) and the gene content analyzed for the presence of ankyrin domain and other predicted proteins potentially impacting psyllid biology. Phylogenetic analysis of individual Wolbachia gene sequences supports the non-Chinese origin of the Florida D. citri isolate being sequenced. Annotation of the psyllid genome itself is ongoing. We have additionally provided bioinformatic assistance to the Angela Douglas lab (Cornell) in extraction of individual transporter sequences from the ACP transcriptome for use in the development of RNAi-based insect control strategies. Genome comparison of Ca. Liberibacter isolates is being conducted to explore the sources of biological differences and to identify sites useful for diagnostic purposes. Genome characterization and comparison of publically available Liberibacter genome sequences (Ca. L. asiaticus psy62 and Ca. L. solanacearum ZC-1) is available at the CG-HLB Genome Resources website (http://citrusgreening.org/). Future plans involve development of a searchable Liberibacter diagnostic sequence database using the over 1700 publically available Ca. Liberibacter gene sequences.